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Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Spending for Safety: Dinghy Dramas... Done!

Dino of Seagull Inflatablesapplying MEK to get the gluestain off our dinghy.

“Oh, that just won’t
do!I’m going to loan you one of
my dinghies while we figure out what to do.No, don’t use your inflatable kayak for your grocery runs or
carrying your ship paperwork!Ummm, don’t leave without returning my dinghy, okay?”

Dino Bruschi, at Seagull
Inflatables, is our new hero. Seagull Inflatables in Falmouth
Harbour, Antigua, sells a whole range of boating safety equipment (dinghies,
life boats, life vests, inflatable fuel bladders, fire extinguishers, etc.). You can tell it’s not just a business;
he really cares.

“Did you lose motor case?” Dino asked.“No, “ Wayne explained. “It’s justeasier for me to see what’s happeningand adjust it that way.” “Hmmm, maybewe shouldn’t sell it,” Dino pondered.“But it’s still better that we give itaway, than you pitch it in the ocean,where it won’t do anyone any good.Someone is always worse off enoughthat they’ll want it.”

By the time he offered us
his dinghy, Dino listened patiently over his lunch hour to our “We aren’t sure
what to do about our dinghy.” We’d blathered on about davits and prospective
future wind-vanes, and stowage and our current decrepit outboard motor and when
to replace it…. Meanwhile Dino managed to keep several balls in the area,
checking in quickly and professionally with several customers and staff, as
well as pricing and spec options for us, without making anyone feel left out. We’re tiny, compared to the $14,000
superyacht customer he’s outfitting, we suspect they’re more his
bread-and-butter, but we are sure we’re treated every bit as well.

Let’s just say Wayne got a lotof forearm work-out pullinghis Johnson. This is a taskbest left in his capable hands.

Dino gave us a ride over to
it to assess our dinghy’s reparability.
“Don’t buy a new one if yours is fixable. If it is, we’ll take care of it,” he promised. Watching the careful attention his
staff was giving the dinghy they were repairing in their yard, we were confident
in their work.

However, once he saw the
pathetic state our mode of transportation, he immediately shifted its priority
in the repair queue from “within the next few days, after the 3 of the 6
dinghies I need to have done before the boat show” to “we’ll get to it
tomorrow, and I am loaning you a dinghy until then.”

At a second glance, when Dino
returned with his loaner dinghy, moved our outboard onto his loaner, we
determined our dinghy was not hypalon after all. PVC as compared to hypalon just doesn’t hold up well, and
investing in continued repair rapidly becomes a losing proposition. We decided then and there, delaying our
dinghy purchase was futile.

Then there was the question
about when to replace out dinghy motor….

Beautiful bouganvilla-draped

customs entrance at historic

Nelson’s Dockyard, English

Harbour, Antigua.

Our battered motor’s a 1996
(16-year-old) 8-horse Johnson; it’s disreputable appearance was not improved by
the thrashing
it got when sucked under the dock at Anse Mitan, Martinique. It’s capricious, often
troublesome starting. It slogged
and sputtered out erratically and without warning. This could happen even in the midst of a full plane. As a passenger, it necessitated a
constant firm, taunt, grip on the painter and molding at least 3 touch-points
of my body to the dinghy to avoid an unplanned, James-Bond like ejection. It’s not the swim I’d mind, but dunking
whatever was in my ever-present daypack was more than more than I was willing
to risk.

To date, we’ve spent $600
for a used dinghy we thought was hypalon, $50 on glue. We also spent $110 to fix the Johnson
outboard motor with a fix and tune-up, a relief we got off that easy given the
unavailability of parts if needed for repair. Time-wise we visited at least 12 chandleries in
multiple cities, multiple times in 5 countries and literally spent days hiking,
rowing and internet researching solutions and alternatives. Not to mention all the time bailing,
winching and repairing it.

How many people does it take to transfer a dinghy? Too many!

We’d heard and assumed our
best deal for a motor and a dinghy would come when we’d be in St. Maarten
(about a month out), Puerto Rico (further) or the U.S. (further still). The
duty-free price Dino quoted us was as good or better a deal that we’d get
there, particularly on the motor.

At one point, we naively
thought either of us could motor along in our dinghy, and my inability to do so
was a friction point. However, it
eventually became abundantly clear to my mechanic husband that at best someone
with his skills and muscle-power would be needed to coddle, curse and bully it
into behaving enough to get us where we needed to go. That meant any time I needed to go someplace, unless I swam
or we hauled the 50-pound inflatable kayak out of our lazarette and blew it up,
then Wayne needed to accompany or take me. While in general Wayne was a remarkably good sport about it,
it was at best, periodically inconvenient. Return pickups without a working phone took some definite
planning.

Dino gave us 3 excellent new
dinghy replacement options, 2 were roll-ups, and one was a hard bottom, all in
the 8-foot range. His duty-free
prices were all in line with what we’d pay in St. Maarten and his motor prices
were particularly good. We opted
for an Apex roll-up (not reliant our davits for stowage when passage-making)
with an inflatable keel, much lighter than our current dinghy, made of more
UV-ray resilient hypalon. With it,
we purchased a 2-stroke 5-horse Yamaha motor, also considerably lighter, with a
good reputation for reliability.

The cost? ~$3,500 USD. It’s painful to spend over 1/10 of what
we paid for our boat, which is our home (a killer deal at $30,000), on a dinghy
and outboard. But between
daily use and safety, it made sense, even if it’s more than twice our targeted
monthly living budget for everything.

Customs official witnesses asWayne signs the paperwork.

Dino, ever ‘Mr. Safety,’
chided, “Since you didn’t get the $5,000 package [9’ hard bottom dinghy], you
saved enough to a to buy lifeboat in the U.S. before you go to the
Pacific.” That decision, and
expense, fortunately, is a year away.

We used Dino’s loaner while
he guided us through the repeated multi-day customs hoops required for our
purchase in Antigua for parts beyond.
We thought it would take a day or two; it took a week.

We’d just given up and blown
town on Friday afternoon, when our dinghy paperwork arrived at customs. Monday we returned to Falmouth,
confirmed our time at customs, 3 pm.

At customs, we met up with
the customs official and two Outdoor World “owners” of the dinghy and
motor. The five of us piled into a
pickup, so the customs official could confirm our dinghy’s baptism, as the
dinghy must touch the water before the paperwork could be signed.

But wait, we weren’t done
yet!The dinghy was missing the
rings we needed to attach it to our davits, so we keep it raised above water
for passages.The Outdoor World
guys had another job, so Clyde from Seagull Inflatables brought us and our new
dinghy back Seagull Inflatables.We discussed davits.Dino
brought us back to his borrowed dinghy and our sad motor.One more day….